Saturday, May 24, 2014

urrendering to liberogressives the total redistribution of wealth they desire, without gaining any concessions from them in return, would be worse than selling our free-market souls to the devil. At least the tragic Dr. Faustus had something tangible, albeit temporary, to show for his diurnalish pact with Mephistopheles. No, our bargain entails only a sip of redistributional hell for the eternal bliss of no more income taxes.

The fair tax's prebate feature already gives us a drop of that hell by refunding in advance the amount of national retail sales tax families will be paying respectively each month on their purchases of basic needs: The larger the family, the larger the prebate. However, public assistance programs still would be required for impoverished families.

But by taking the full sip, our bargain eliminates those separate entitlements along with all their attendant agencies, not only making government less bloated but freeing lower-income families from their servile dependence on that political class most committed to doling out other people's money. Instead of tax prebates, the fair tax would incorporate payments equivalent to all purchases of essential goods and services by America's families plus the national retail sales tax on them. Each household, regardless its income, receives this necessities allowance based on how many valid Social Security cardholders reside there.

This is our side of the bargain. In exchange, the servants of redistribution give us a land totally purged of all other federal taxes, whether on incomes, gifts, capital gains, or estates, as well as Social Security withholdings.

Finally, by forfeiting a tiny bit more of our souls, we may increase the allowance to include purchase of basic health care plans, thus ridding our land of every Øfascist"Care" malignancy too. Moreover, since every American's basic purchases are compensated, there would be no need to continue separately feeding the Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid bureaucracies. We'll eliminate those middlemonsters also, and pass the savings on to you, the American people.

There are, nevertheless, several market-force realities that must be taken into account before striking such a bargain. When every citizen or legal resident starts each month with the same minimum amount of money to spend, there's a substantial risk of having too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. The trick is to make the fair tax not just revenue neutral but spending neutral as well. Entitlement programs already transfer an ungodly portion of that amount, either directly or indirectly, to grocery stores, doctors, day care centers, etc., etc. But if we're no longer paying the swarms of federal officers currently sent hither to harass our people and eat out their substance — aka bureaucrats — then the exorbitant salaries, perks, and bonuses they receive won't be coming from their big fat Civil Service paychecks but from their finding and working real jobs in the private sector. That is, the woefully few who can actually become qualified and valuable enough to be paid the same amount there. This would automatically result in a drastic pay cut for almost every member of that swarm, which would help offset the amount of money entering the economy via the necessities allowance. In addition, nearly all of Washington, D.C. would be rendered utterly a barren wasteland after the luscious and luxurious overhead formerly enjoyed by those swarmers falls victim to the bulldozer; although several nice, empty parks could be planted in its place. The total amount of money the federal government may justifiably take from us then would be far less than what it steals, borrows, cheats, and extorts from us now, while the total amount of money hemorrhaging out of it would be correspondingly reduced. It means both a smaller and a much more efficient and effectual federal government. Something every American should welcome.

If the above is able to sufficiently forestall any inflationary effects otherwise stemming from the necessities allowance, ours is a bargain from which we wouldn't have to wait 24 years before seeing very real benefits.